Nina Ricci / Fall 2014 RTW

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Paris might be the home of Nina Ricci, but spiritually, this coming fall at least, the house resides on the other side of the Atlantic, in Houston. Peter Copping, the extremely gifted creative director of Nina Ricci, visited the Texan city on business, and fell in love with the eclectic interiors couturier Charles James created for art collector and philanthropist Dominique de Menil’s home, designed by Philip Johnson in 1950. To someone like Copping, an interiors devotee, it was the starting point that led him to think about the relationship between fashion and the home. Also pinned onto his mental mood board: the etiolated, stylized lines of flowers from Art Nouveau, in particular the iris; the stark, precise lines of ultraminimalist settings; and the opulence and grandeur of the decorating of la comtesse Jacqueline de Ribes. It was, Copping said simply, all about being “chez elle.”

It always goes back to the home for Copping, who has an incredible gift at—and lightness of touch with—clothes that feel intimate and personal, and somehow also makes them feel grounded in women’s everyday lives; few other designers this season have so unwaveringly, or successfully, flipped between the need for fantasy and the need for reality. And none more so than Copping with his lovely fall 2014 show, which conjured up the boudoir charm he’s made such a part of Ricci—the fragility of the lace, the quiver of satin, the sighing lushness of velvet—allied this time round to a more urban, graphic look. Copping opened with a series of tailoring worked in a blanketlike cashmere, such as an enveloping gray coat with a controlled sense of volume wrapped around a python-print satin dress, starting high on the neck and fluttering to a finish above the knees.

The contrast Copping set from the start—streamlined tailored modernity balanced by a sensual, silken notion of dressing—only got stronger. There were plenty of standouts: silk jacquard blouses finely traced with those jugendstil florals; coats curved closed to the body and trimmed with fur both real and fake; roll-neck sweaters—come next fall, get ready, you’re never going to see your neck naked—tucked into short leather skirts or pajama pants, knit at the front, silk at the back. And to close, there were evening looks galore, one more gorgeous than the last, from a super sexy dress constructed out of panels of brocade and guipure lace, worn with a faille-and-fur bomber jacket, to a tee and skirt in black and sapphire blue velvet and lace, to a trio of lace gowns, the closing look also shimmering with intricately placed sequined leaves.